People who want to open small businesses often have limited experience with safety issues, and are focused on looks, functionality, and making money — all reasonable objectives.
Fire Departments and Building Officials have studied what causes disasters, fires, collapses, injuries, deaths, and destruction. Building codes are what they are because of eons of collected experience, product testing, etc. Context (how close are other structures, what are they made of, what are their uses and occupant densities?) and the fire department’s capabilities have to be considered in an urban setting. The prohibitions these impose are the difference in a safe, first-world existence, and the dangers of the third-world.
In this case, the property owner would like to make more/spend less by throwing caution to the winds, thus putting lives and neighboring properties at higher risk. Freedom within a “civilized society” requires responsibility, plus checks & balances.
And Fire Departments and Building Officials often have limited experience with opening and operating a small business. Which requires an unreasonable amount of time and effort be expended simply to be in Government Compliance.
Yes, public safety is/should be a concern. But I personally have found that blanket one-size-fits-all policies (codes) written by government “Experts” are usually unreasonable.
Sorry, but I am just not on board the “Thank God the Government is here to keep us safe!” train.
Regards,